Jeffrey Sharkey gives us OilCan before starting at Google

[talkbackdroid]

Jeffrey Sharkey is at it again, this time pumping out his OilCan before he hops over to Google. For those of you who do not know who Jeffery is, he is one of the developers behind CompareEverywhere. OilCan is basically Greasemonkey on steroids ... Read more

[mixpix405]

About to try it out. I'm excited. Sharkey is top notch, as is greasemonkey.

[VValdo]

Jeff is also one of the masterminds behind the SSH client Connectbot. Congrats to him on getting the gig at Google. They truly are sweeping up the geniuses!

W

[mixpix405]

He's done a few other projects for Android worth mentioning as well...

He wrote TodoList, which is, obviously, a To-Do list app, that lets you use the touchscreen to literally strike through or "cross off" items you've done. Pretty slick. I still prefer QuickList for this function, but for different tastes, this is nice.

Also, slightly useless, slightly genious, the app called GroupHome is an app that categorizes and groups all of your installed apps into expandable drawers. Again, this isn't PERFECT in my opinion, but it's a great proof-of-concept. I wish there was an option built into the Android OS that let me have my apps drawer categorized... at least seperate the apps from the games, or something.

These can both be foud at his blog, along with many more projects... Sharkey seems to be a genious of sorts.

http://www.jsharkey.org/blog/

[ghoonk]

Now, we wait for scripts that allow us to strip off Google's Adsense, AdWord, known ad servers, etc. While this won't stop the ad media from being downloaded, it suppresses display, which makes the web browsing experience that much more pleasant.

Next step would be to come up with a modified HOSTS file (see http://pages.swcp.com/~manos/blockads.html for examples) that would route all calls to known ad servers to localhost, and when used in conjunction with Greasemonkey scripts that suppress ad display, will result in a far improved web browsing experience.

[danguyf]

I've been trying all morning to write some userscripts for it and it's a serious pain. Awesome concept, but WAAAAAAH.

Some things I have learned:
1.) It's not like Greasemonkey; it doesn't just install into the Browser. Rather, it is its own WebKit wrapper. (This would be a good thing if not for what follows.)
2.) It has caching issues.
2a.) No matter how many times I tell it to refresh a page it shows the page just as it was the first time you loaded it. The only way I've found to work around this is to uninstall OilCan and then re-install.
2b.) You can't update an installed userscript. Even if you uninstall and then re-install OilCan and then install the userscript anew, it will keep the userscript just as it was the first time you installed it. The only work-around is to change the script's name.
3.) I can't figure out how to pick a script from the SD card. I named it correctly but it never shows up.
4.) If uncheck a default script it will be checked again next time you run OilCan.
5.) If you delete a default script it will be back the next time you run OilCan.

I created what should be a fairly simple (and pretty much completely cloned from the existing half.com script) userscript for LibraryThing.com but right now nothing happens when I press the "Scan barcode" button and trying to debug it is too agonizing for me to continue.